You love programming useful web applications to enhance the gamer’s experience, and finding ways to get the most performance out of databases. Your work extends the game into the real world, and lets gamers interact with the game remotely from any web enabled device. You enjoy building communities online, and finding ways to make game data interesting and useful. You also deeply enjoy the challenge of scaling web and database functionality to handle millions of gamers, using smart programming, exploring the latest open source tools and languages, and a critical eye for performance.

A Typical Day

You and your team attend a kick-off milestone meeting where you are charged with designing and implementing the best character viewer for the game that you can think of. You break out into a planning session with your web designer and community manager and quickly sketch out a few ideas. Using rapid development and prototyping, you get a skeleton of the web application up and running and deploy it to the rest of the company for feedback. After several rapid cycles of deploying, testing and iteration, the web designer puts the final touches on the graphics and the milestone is done.

Who You Work With the Most

You work closely with the community manager, designing and developing applications that help build great gaming communities. You also work closely with the development team, finding ways to extend the game into the world wide web and web enabled devices.

What You’ve Done Before

• Proven track record of delivering successful web applications with scalability
• Buzzword Compliant (PHP, Zend, jQuery, Javascript, HTML, XMLRPC)
• Experienced with LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)
• Strong experience developing secure systems
• Strong understanding of MySQL scalability techniques (sharding, memcache, and others)
• Passion to design the best web applications and online communities
• Passion for games

Send resume and cover letter to:

Red 5 Studios Email: jobs@red5studios.com

In addition, we have J. Axer providing his amazing Wacom skills to create impressive concepts for Red 5’s project. Adding that touch of shock and awe to the game is Marc M., our technical artist, who is working on shaders and particles to really make things pop… literally.

We also added another level designer in the form of Stephen O. With his extensive background in shooters, most recently Global Agenda, Stephen humbles us all with his expertise. Rounding out our full-time hires is Ben Y. who keeps everything in the office running as our systems administrator.

Last, but not least are our new summer interns. Dylan and Tina are both assisting on the art team and doing a wonderful job. No injuries during the intern hazing phase either; a definite first.

We’re still looking for more! So if you want to join the tribe, be sure to check out our Jobs page.

You are a talented artist that enjoys the challenges of expressing abstract ideas through the animation and creation of visual effects. You enjoy tweaking particle generators and designing new ways to make something explode or burn or making waves crash on the shore. You have experience working with organic and mechanical effects and are able to represent a magic missile as easily as an exploding grenade.

A Typical Day

You sit down with a team of designers and animators to discuss a new ability for players; including how the ability works and brainstorming some ideas for the visual effects. After the meeting, you head back to your desk to start creating a particle system that will express the new ability. You come up with a few examples and gather feedback before adding it to the game for everyone to take a look.

Who You Work With the Most

You end up working with the designers, animators and technical artists the most. Making sure that the effects match the systems that have been designed as well as making sure the performance requirements are met.

What You’ve Done Before

• Experience creating and animating expressive visual effects utilizing Photoshop, Unreal, and 3d Studio (or equivalent programs).
• Ability to create natural and fantastical effects based on design requirements.
• Understanding of technical requirements and performance considerations for effects pipelines.
• Ability to work alone and as part of a team.
• Able to match existing art style guides.
• A passion for games.
• Previous games experience is a bonus.

Send resume and cover letter to:

Red 5 Studios Email: jobs@red5studios.com

What’s it all about

You are a highly motivated Linux and Windows guru who is just as much at home working on remote servers as you are fixing a Windows desktop. You love trying out new technologies and putting those technologies into practice in a production environment. You are comfortable working with artists, developers and executives alike in order to make sure projects stay on track and any technical problems are resolved.

A Typical Day

You come in a little bit late because you know you’ll be staying after everyone’s gone in order to upgrade the office network. After checking your e-mail and viewing the reports of last night’s backup processes and taking a quick look at the latest game build, you finish up the imaging of a few workstations and fix an artist’s issue with their e-mail. Later in the afternoon, you meet with the business team to go over any budget requirements for IT and give updates on any ongoing projects the IT team has been working on. After the meeting, you prep for the network upgrade and confirm some new standard operational procedures with vendors regarding hosted solutions.

Who you work with the most

As the primary IT representative, you work with everyone in the company. You work very closely with the business and executive teams when working with large projects, but you have the fortune to also get close with every member of the team through supporting the office network, servers and workstations.

What you’ve done before

• Extensive experience with Linux-based systems and server infrastructures.
• Deep level understanding and implementation of latest network security methods.
• Experience with Cisco routers and firewall solutions.
• Working-level knowledge of Windows active directory domains and Microsoft Exchange server.
• Great people skills and a willingness to get your hands dirty.
• Excellent organizational skills.
• Experience with installation and configuration of development tools (3D MAX, Visual Studio, SVN repository, etc).
• A passion for gaming.

Send resume and cover letter to:

Red 5 Studios Email: jobs@red5studios.com

Mr. Jun Zhu, The9’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, commented, “Red 5 is a creator of innovative entertainment software, designing games that focus on ease of play and fun. With the acquisition, The9’s global strategy is beginning to take shape. It will further enhance our game development capability and diversify our game portfolio and pipeline. I believe our collaboration will create new and exciting entertainment content for people around the world.”

Mark Kern, the Chief Executive Officer of Red 5, said, “We are very excited to welcome The9 as our key investor and to announce that they are making a commitment to us with the equity infusion. The investment recognizes the hard work of the Red 5 team and the strong potential of the game we are working on, as well as our ability, in the future, to become a multi-game studio. By leveraging The9’s outstanding expertise in the operation of online games, we will have a great advantage in bringing our games to millions of online gamers around the world. We look forward to a long and fruitful partnership with The9.”

About The9 Limited

The9 Limited is an online game operator and developer in China. The9’s business is primarily focused on developing and operating high-quality games for online game market. The9 directly, or through affiliates, operates licensed MMORPGs and advanced casual games including Soul of The Ultimate Nation™, Granado Espada, EA SPORTS™ FIFA Online 2 and Atlantica, as well as its proprietary games World of Fighter and Jiu Zhou Zhan Ji, in mainland China. It has also obtained exclusive licenses to operate other games in mainland China, including Audition 2 and Kingdom Heroes 2 Online. In addition, The9 is developing various proprietary games, including Miracles: Ultimate X, Tiny Tribe, Monster of War and other MMORPGs and advanced causal games.

About Red 5 Studios, Inc.

RED5 Studios is an online game developer located in California, formed in 2006 by former executives and developers from Blizzard Entertainment®. Red 5 Studios is dedicated to bringing together millions of gamers across the World by creating immersive worlds, intriguing stories and compelling characters and believes that online games and persistent worlds are the future of video games.

Safe Harbor Statement

This announcement contains forward-looking statements. These statements are made under the “safe harbor” provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as “will,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “future,” “intends,” “plans,” “believes,” “estimates” and similar statements. Among other things, the business outlook and quotations from management in this press release contain forward-looking statements. The9 may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its periodic reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Forms 20-F and 6-K, etc., in its annual report to shareholders, in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to third parties. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about The9’s beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement. Potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, The9’s limited operating history as an online game operator, political and economic policies of the Chinese government, the laws and regulations governing the online game industry, information disseminated over the Internet and Internet content providers in China, intensified government regulation of Internet cafes, The9’s ability to retain existing players and attract new players, license, develop or acquire additional online games that are appealing to users, anticipate and adapt to changing consumer preferences and respond to competitive market conditions, and other risks and uncertainties outlined in The9’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual reports on Form 20-F. The9 does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law.

For further information, please contact:

Ms. Phyllis Sai
IR Manager, Investor Relations
The9 Limited
Tel: +86 (21) 5172-9990
Email: IR@corp.the9.com

With this new website, we also hope to bring you content on a more frequent basis. We realize that it’s been quiet for too long and we want to make changes on that front. Be sure to take a look at The Tribe page and get to know the people behind Red 5 Studios.

For those of you that are really on the ball, you’ll notice a new Media section. We’ve got some really nice concept work up there for you to enjoy. We’ll continue to update that with new shots as we can. As always, feel free to send your comments to contact@red5studios.com. See you soon.

Our very own Jeff Lawniczak is going to be wandering the floor up in San Francisco during the Game Developers Conference. If you see him, be sure to stop him and hand him a business card. Perhaps even take a photo with the man and submit it to us. Who knows what you might get in return…

You can’t get enough of playing and designing multiplayer, competitive shooters. You are almost always at the top of the ranks and have a deep understanding of what makes for fun and competitive gameplay. But you also are able to identify with the needs of casual gamers, recognizing the activities, hooks and helpful UI and feedback elements that will draw more players into your game.

A Typical Day

After enjoying a nice cup of coffee, you jump into a meeting with your feature team: a cross-disciplinary group of artists, designers and programmers that is responsible for weapons design. You realize that a good weapon has to function, feel, look and sound great, so you and the team brainstorm the look and feel of a new weapon you’ve been planning with the designers before dividing up the tasks. You agree to meet back in a day or two to see how things are coming along. Meanwhile, you jump into your second feature team in charge of a particular map for the game. You describe the new weapon that you’ve been planning with the other team, and you quickly sketch out a few ways that it could be useful in the new map. The whole team gets excited about the possibilities, and working together with the weapons team, sets a goal to get weapon and map into next week’s playtest.

Who You Work With the Most

You work closely with the Lead Designer and Class Lead to help set up overall goals for the gameplay and co-ordinate with the team to rally around a common vision. On your feature teams, you are often working with artists and programmers, and together directly implementing the feature your team is responsible for.

What You’ve Done Before

• Experience designing combat systems, levels or other key design elements for multiplayer online shooters.
• Excellent Communication and Organizational skills
• Passion for playing online shooters at a competitive level
• Great people skills, able to work in multi-disciplinary, team oriented environments.
• A sense of fun.